"Well, you'd better look out for old Pap, then," rejoined the other. "He'll catch you, sure, and likely burn your boat; and if he don't the guerillas will. They're awful bad now, and there isn't a steamboat ever gets through without being attacked, and often they're destroyed." Al felt a sudden chill of apprehension. "Do you know whether they attacked the steamer _North Wind_ on her way down?" he asked, anxiously. "No, I don't remember it," the militiaman returned. "Why, yes, you do," broke in his companion. "Don't you know, two or three weeks ago a band of guerillas got the _North Wind_ somewhere between Lexington and Miami? They crossed the river on her and then burnt her up. It was reported several of her people were killed in the mix-up." "Oh, that's right; I had forgotten," returned the soldier. Then to Al he said, curiously, "Why do you ask?" "Nothing," answered Al, in a dull voice. "Only I had a young brother on her who had been a prisoner among the Indians. He was going home to his mother in St. Louis." "Pshaw, that's too bad!" exclaimed the militiaman, sympathetically. "But he's probably gotten through all right." "Maybe he has and maybe not," said Al. "It's hard to tell in such times. Come on, Wallace," he added. "Let's go back to the boat." They rose abruptly and left the store. Al slept very little that night, and when he did his rest was broken by troubled dreams of Tommy; he imagined his brother in all sorts of desperate situations and losing his life in a variety of horrible ways. Even when awake and thinking rationally, he realized that almost any of the fancies of his nightmare might easily be realities, for the guerilla warfare in Missouri at this time had degenerated into a carnival of barbarous brutality hardly exceeded in the history of any country, and the mercy or cruelty dealt out to a prisoner by one of these bands of lawless marauders depended almost wholly upon the humor of the guerilla chief. CHAPTER XVII CAPTURED BY GUERILLAS Captain Lamont was disturbed by the rumors he heard at Kansas City of the dangerous condition of navigation below that point; but he was a brave and determined man, and would not be swerved from his purpose of reaching St. Louis, now that he had gotten so far on the way and overcome so many difficulties. The next morning the barge started out as usual, and as there was deeper water the farther down river she went, her progress became more rapid. Four days after leaving Kansas City she tied up for the night opposite Brunswick, Missouri, a town about twenty-five miles, by the channel, above Glasgow. Though it was said guerillas had been in Brunswick the day before, none had yet interrupted the journey of the barge, nor had any even been seen; and Captain Lamont and his men had begun to think that the alarming rumors circulating through the country were largely without foundation.